Bashing Churches

Today as I was checking the stats to my blog using Google Analytics I noticed I got one hit from a google search for "blogs bashing newspring church".

For those that may not know, Newspring Church is in Anderson, South Carolina and is pastored by a guy named Perry Noble.

Perry writes a very popular blog and for reasons I can't understand gets criticized by Churches. Their church has grown to be a church that averages around 7,000. (Newspring guys and gals if I got that number wrong, sorry.)

I just want to go on record that we nor I are "not" a blog, church, pastor, or flat out anything that bashes Newspring.

I got total respect for these guys and would actually love to either go visit and see what they are doing or talk with a certain someone or other someone from there about what is going on. I think there is a whole lot Journey Church can learn from Newspring.

Just like our church could learn a lot from Bayarea which is in our city. I got a chance to go visit them last month and I have the utmost respect for them. I thought their Pastor Bil Cornelius presented an awesome message and I was actually shocked since I had "heard" so many things through the years from pastors and Christians. It really saddens me when churches can't recognize that just because we don't do "church" the same way doesn't mean that certain other churches aren't "of God."

I really feel there are many pastors out there that need to grow up when it comes to this. You would get farther ahead in your church if you learned from some of these men. It doesn't mean you have to adopt everything or believe everything they do. There are so many things that these men of God and these churches are doing right to reach the lost.

Here's the deal. If you don't have the guts to go to one of these churches or sit down and speak to these pastors of growing churches, one on one...then do us all a favor and shut-up.

Now if you just want to keep your little holy huddle "us four and no more" then by all means do it but shut-up.

I would even go as far to say that one reason you are probably not growing (if you even want to) is because you are criticizing some mighty works of God.

And if you are part of Journey Church, know that we are going to edify and pray for other churches out there that God is using to reach the lost. And we are going to be a church that grows because there are numbers of lost people out there in this city that God has called us too. And we are going to be a church that does whatever it takes to Connect Them With God.

And we are going to Impact This World.